John Logue was, and continues to be, the Fr. Arizmendi of Ohio and the Rust Belt. Fr. Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta was the priest who rallied the Basques from the ashes of Guernika to create Mondragon. He was a tireless teacher and a practical leader, although he never held any official position in any of the Mondragon companies.
I knew John from the beginning of his journey to create Mondragon in Ohio.
In 1984 he came to the first union conference on employee ownership in the US, held in Detroit, and asked to clone me to help him in Ohio. Of course John went way beyond any clone of me and the Michigan Employee Ownership Center. The employee owned network of companies with related loan funds and insurance pools is the closest example of Mondragon-like industrial business cooperation in the US.
John championed and helped create some of the first industrial worker cooperatives in the US when that form was not popular. He helped create legal tools to make them more viable.
The OEOC is leading the emerging Evergreen Cooperative group in inner-city Cleveland businesses. It is the first such effort in the US. Communities around the country are looking to it for inspiration.
In 1997, John took a chance on my vision to create a global network to promote broad ownership as a response to globalization. He found initial funding from KSU and worked with me to secure funding from the Ford and Sloan Foundations and the German Marshall Fund to create the Capital Ownership Group (COG). COG is global network, on-line think tank and conference center that operated for 10 years from OEOC. It enabled people from the developing and developed world to share best practices and create policy proposals to protect communities from global corporate overreaching.
It was a great joy working with John over the past 26 years and an incredible learning experience. John was a highly gifted teacher and leader. He did impeccable research, along with his long-time research partner, Jackie Yates. That research formed the base of the powerful and successful arguments he made to bring about major change in Ohio, which is a beacon throughout the Midwest and the world.
He wrote simply and powerfully, in a style anyone could understand. I remember hearing him at a meeting of workers who were deciding whether or not to pursue an employee buyout, and thinking he sounded just like a Texas preacher at a revival. He was able to communicate the practical benefits of employee ownership and cooperation to business, government, labor, academic and philanthropic leaders. He inspired people from all these communities to work together to build a resource center and employee owned business network that is the most vibrant and successful in America.
He built an incredible team of staff, advisors, friends, consultants, political and thought leaders.
The auto industry crisis has finally made south east Michigan seriously consider worker ownership as a redevelopment tool. I’ve been discussing strategy with John. He was more than willing to repay whatever help we provided OEOC 25 years ago. He made an inspiring and riveting speech at the first major conference of Detroit’s Center for Community-Based Enterprise in September. We will sorely miss his guidance and advice.
Most of all, John was a dear friend and colleague. He was imaginative, visionary, practical, a lot of fun to be with and loved his family. In the last few years, when Olga and Katherine traveled with him on all his trips, he beamed a new and beautiful sense of personal contentment.
He was not finished, but John lived a very good life.
Deborah Groban Olson, dgo@esoplaw.com is an employee ownership attorney, Ex. Dir. of the Center for Community-Based Enterprise, Inc., collaborator with John since 1984 on many employee ownership projects, including the Capital Ownership Group.
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I’ve only known John for six months. The first time I met him was this past July while I was interviewing for a “non-existent” internship at the center. Yet this short time frame is a poor measure of John’s impact on my life. While John was in the hospital, like my other incredible co-workers, I spent many nights and an evenings with John’s loved ones. My co-workers would joke, “you're part of the family now!” But John always regarded me as family.
ReplyDeleteJohn never referred to me as an “intern”. Instead he treated me as another individual who shared his awesome vision. The last two weeks of John’s life I realized I was willing to do more for John and Olga than I’ve ever expected, but they would do the same for me. John loved people courageously,unconditionally and with no reservations. I suspect this was part of his inspiration for the work he did. He believed people’s quality of life was affected by their jobs, and that everyone deserved to have a voice and be respected. As my boss, friend and mentor, John always made me feel this way.
These past six months have changed me immensely. Because John believed in me, I was given the chance to work at the center. Even after his death, I will be given more opportunities because of his decision six months ago.
But john’s legacy is much bigger than me. I play only a small role in his contribution, and it’s much bigger than Evergreen and Ohio too. While others remained cynical or accepted the status quo, John challenged the traditional paradigm of a hierarchical workplace, believing that a more democratic place of work would enrich people’s lives, communities and relationships. Many people will better off because of John, even those who never had the chance to meet him. Most importantly, he inspired others to believe, and I’m forever grateful for that inspiration.